1. Prevent Fish Kills

Without aeration, the two best sources of oxygen for a pond are aquatic plants, and air from the atmosphere. This can be extremely problematic come wintertime. When the temperature cools, thick layers of ice form, creating a sheet across the entire surface of the pond. This sheet of ice stubbornly prevents any oxygen transfer from occurring between the pond and the atmosphere. Additionally, when snowfall inevitably builds up on top of this ice sheet, sunlight will be completely inhibited from entering the pond. This will further prevent oxygen restoration, as aquatic plants will be unable to photosynthesize. As this happens, fish will begin to use up the available oxygen, and the dissolved oxygen content of the pond can fall to dangerously low levels. Over the course of the winter, without any renewing oxygen source, fish will often begin to suffocate. Come the end of winter, there’s a good chance that when the pond thaws, it will reveal a collection of dead fish.

This outcome can be avoided by way of winter aeration. A diffused aeration source at the bottom of your pond will keep the oxygen supply plentiful throughout the winter. Not only that, but it will make for a much healthier, more attractive, and all around nicer pond come springtime.

1a. Eliminate Pond Stratification And Turnover

Another problem that can plague ponds in the spring is that of pond turnover. This phenomenon occurs when the top and bottom layers of the pond mix due to a fluctuation in temperature. This causes what is known as pond stratification to dissipate. When this occurs, the layers laden with dissolved oxygen are forced to mix with the layers that are oxygen deficient. The result is an environment with a sparse content of dissolved oxygen spread out over the entirety of the pond, leaving no area with a healthy dissolved oxygen level. This can often result in large fish kills, as well as a dirty, odorous, unhealthy pond for months to come.

By employing the use of aeration year round, the layers are kept circulating under the ice throughout the winter months. This will help your pond avoid stratification, turnover, and all of the disastrous effects that often afflict ponds in the spring.

2. Avoid Pond Odors

During the winter, in the absence of oxygen, anaerobic bacteria is forced to break down any excess nutrient that happens to find its way into your pond. When this happens, it is done inefficiently and with the emission of many noxious gases such as sulfur and methane. Especially when your pond is closed off by a layer of ice, these gases can be dangerous to fish if they become too prevalent. Not only this, but when the pond thaws in spring, you will be greeted by the staggering stench of numerous months buildup of odorous gases. For obvious reasons this is a very unpleasant experience that should be avoided at all costs.

Once again, winter aeration can help solve this problem. First, it will supply the necessary oxygen so that aerobic bacteria can break down nutrient efficiently. Additionally, aeration will create a hole in the ice that will remain throughout the winter, so as to allow noxious gases to escape into the atmosphere instead of building up in your pond throughout the winter.

3. Inhibit Algae Growth

A common misconception with pond owners is that a problem only exists when the pond is covered in algae throughout the spring, summer, and into the fall. This is not the case. The pond problem actually begins when the dissolved oxygen content starts to decrease. When this happens, it allows nutrient levels to rise, algae to grow, and the overall health of the pond ecosystem to deteriorate.

Cold water is naturally able to absorb oxygen better than warm water. So, what better way to take advantage of nature in this case than to boost the level of your pond’s dissolved oxygen over the winter, when it can absorb so much more oxygen? Aeration will boost the dissolved oxygen level over the winter months, and instead of having a pond deficient of dissolved oxygen come spring and summer when less oxygen can be absorbed, you will have a healthy pond. These leftover effects should prove beneficial into the following seasons as the benefits of aeration will build upon themselves, yielding a healthy pond throughout the year.

4. Be Environmentally Friendly

The main benefit behind winter aeration is that, overall, it is much better for the environment. Because the water is kept circulating, a hole anywhere from five to fifty feet in diameter will generally form in the ice and stay throughout the winter months. As was mentioned previously, this allows gases to release into the atmosphere, which is good for the aquatic life. Now, not only the pond environment benefits, but other wildlife in the area can also be a beneficiary of winter aeration. Allow me to explain…

Oftentimes the cold, desolate days of January and February seem gray, dry, and virtually lifeless. Open water can offer a refreshing break from this both for wildlife and for you. Animals have a place to drink, fish have the necessary dissolved oxygen, and any land animals that are dependent on a water source have that provided to them. Furthermore you, the pond owner, can admire the beauty of nature from the comfort of your own home during a season when it is generally scarce.

It’s difficult to quantify or qualify the benefits of winter aeration, but rest assured that this one step can lead to a healthier pond, safer and happier wildlife, as well as much needed stress relief come the spring and summer.

The Setup

We keep saying “Our MARS Aerator utilizes Patented Double-Bubble Technology to both mix and aerate your pond.” That’s all well and good, but what do we really mean? Let’s see if we can clear that up…

A very brief introduction to diffused aeration: There are two types of diffused aeration. These are 1) Coarse Bubble Aeration and 2) Fine Bubble Aeration. The coarse bubble aeration technique utilizes fewer, larger bubbles. Outside of the MARS Aeration technology, coarse bubble aeration is rarely seen in the pond aeration field. Conversely, fine bubble aeration employs the use of more, smaller bubbles in order to aerate.

Due to the science behind these techniques (stay tuned!), coarse bubble aeration will never oxygenate as well as fine bubble aeration. Likewise, fine bubble aeration will never mix as well as coarse bubble aeration. There has to be some give and take either on the side of oxygen output or mixing action. That’s the way it’s always been.

I say thee nay!

This aeration-world status quo wasn’t good enough for us, and this dissatisfaction is what eventually lead us to Double-Bubble Technology. I’ll now see if I can try and explain how we (and you) are able to have our cake and eat it too.

The Players

Bubble #1: The Coarse Bubble.

Size: Larger than 2mm in diameter.

Skills Include: Mixing Water, Destratifying Pond Layers, Breaking down Nutrients

Catch Phrase: “Bigger is better.”

The Coarse Bubble is expelled from a tube in the middle of the MARS Aerator. Being a larger bubble, it causes a more violent displacement of water to occur. This water displacement results in a mixing of the pond water.

Think about heating water on the stove. As little bubbles start to rise, the water in the pot remains relatively still. But once the water begins to boil, larger bubbles are formed and rise to the surface. Then what happens? The water begins to churn about and you can see there is a definite mixing action occurring in the pot. The same basic principle applies to the effect of the coarse bubble on your pond. This not only reduces pond stratification, but also causes bacteria to come into close contact with nutrients, which helps to break them down more quickly.

Additionally, the larger displacement of water creates a suctioning effect that will gently pull excess sludge and stagnant water from the bottom of the pond. It will then be mixed in with the rest of the water and broken down by bacteria, leading to a much happier, healthier pond ecosystem.

Bubble #2: The Fine Bubble.

Size: Smaller than 2mm in diameter.

Skills Include: Possessing a High Oxygen Transfer Efficiency, Maximizing Surface Area, Long and Leisurely Trips to the Surface

Catch Phrase: “Less is more.”

The Fine Bubble is released through diffuser membranes, which expel up to 30-50 thousand bubbles per second. That means that in under a day and a half, fine bubble diffusers can release as many bubbles as there are people in the world today. In three weeks it can release as many bubbles as there are stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Through an increased number of small bubbles, versus a decreased number of large bubbles, fine bubble aeration is able to release more oxygen into the pond due to its greater surface area.

Think about one large bubble, floating to the surface of a pond. How much overall bubble is touching the water? Now break that one bubble into a thousand little bubbles. The overall bubble-to-water contact clearly increases. More bubble-to-water contact means more opportunity for oxygen to be transferred. Additionally, fine bubbles rise to the surface of the pond much slower than coarse bubbles. By spending more time in the water, fine bubbles have more opportunity to transfer their oxygen to the pond. These are the main concepts behind fine bubble aeration and why it has a higher oxygen transfer rate than the coarse bubble. The higher the oxygen transfer rate, the more oxygen is released into the pond, and the healthier the pond becomes.

The Result

Double Bubble Technology

With the combination of the coarse bubble and the fine bubble, pond aeration has never been more effective and efficient. The mixing of the coarse bubble combined with the oxygenating of the fine bubble creates an aerating force the likes of which have never been seen, in the form of the MARS Aerator.

Believe it or not, the below freezing days of winter are coming to an end! With warmer temperatures comes the ability to enjoy your pond. This Spring Pond Checklist is designed to help give you a head start preparing your pond for a beautiful growing season.

Spring is one of our favorite times of the year; birds are singing, flowers are sprouting and the sun is shinning – perfect conditions to enjoy your pond. But beware, without taking a few critical steps early, your pond enjoyment could be ruined by flooding, fish kills, and algae!

Here is our checklist for preparing your pond for an enjoyable spring and summer:

1) Check over your pond

With spring comes rain. Check your spillways for blockages – often trees can fall or beavers can dam-up spillways preventing the free flow of water. Any blockages can cause flooding that can kill surrounding plants, cause fish kills and damage electrical infrastructure near the pond among, other things.

Check the pond banks for signs of erosion – spring rain will exacerbate this. A short-term prevention method is laying sod on the bare banks. For the long term, consider planting native prairie grasses in the worst effected areas; they will not only help to prevent erosion, but will also act buffer to limit algae fueling nutrients getting into your pond.

2) Avoid Spring Fish Kills

If your fish are still alive, they’re lucky to have survived the arctic winter. Unfortunately, it only takes a spring without sufficient aeration for their luck to run out.

As temperatures increase, the different layers of the water column will begin to mix. As a result, the water at the bottom of pond then becomes warmer and, initially, the level of oxygen increases.

Bacteria at the bottom of the pond will then wake up from their cryogenic state and begin rapidly consuming the nutrients (leaves, waterfoul excrement etc.) that are present at the bottom of the pond. Before too long, oxygen levels plummet and a mass fish kill can occur.

By installing aeration early in the spring season, you will begin to mix the different layers of the water column while directly adding oxygen. We recommend the MARS 1500 Aeration System as the Patented Double Bubble Technology is specifically designed to Mix and Aerate (add oxygen to water).

3) Get Ahead of the Algae Game

As spring gives way to summer, the increase in temperatures coupled with the nutrient runoff of fertilizers, waterfowl excrement, leaves etc. from spring rains becomes a toxic combination. Inevitably algae blooms will occur that create pond odors, mosquito infestations and poor water clarity.

Give your pond a head start by boosting levels of beneficial bacteria, such as Triplepoint blend Pro-biotic. When used with proper aeration, bacteria will begin to consume nutrients and prevent them from fueling algae blooms when summer arrives.

For years, homeowners, H.O.A’s, and property managers believed that fountains were the answer to keeping ponds and lakes clean and algae-free.

Consumers are now slowly learning that fountains are not a viable solution, recognizing that they are relics of a time when people were less concerned about energy costs or detrimental environmental impact.

We have extensive experience with fountains, and can attest that they are a very poor method of abating algae and other pond problems.

Indeed, the Kentucky State Aquaculture Center States that, “Fountains will not typically provide an energy efficient or practical source of aeration/water destratification in most ponds.”

So, why are fountains impractical? The following is a list of reasons outlining the inadequacies of pond fountains:

1.    Fountains are Bad at Aerating Your Pond:

By spraying water into the air, fountains rely on air-water contact for oxygen transfer. Because the water droplets’ airtime is relatively short, and their surface area relatively small, only minimal quantities of oxygen are imparted into the water.

The MARS, on the other hand, is a pond management alternative emits many millions of bubbles daily, each with a longer rise time and comparably larger surface area/volume ratio—allowing it to add much more oxygen to the entire water column.

2.    Fountains Waste Your Money with Inefficient Operation:

Propelling water into the air is rather energy intensive. It is for the same reason that propeller-driven watercraft get terrible gas mileage—often below 4 miles per gallon—because moving water around requires loads of energy.

It is quite normal for a water fountain to consume more than twice the energy as a diffused air system, like the MARS.

3.    Fountains are Inadequate at Mixing Your Pond:

Fountains fail to mix the entire water column as they both draw water from and spray water over the pond’s surface. The deeper regions of the pond are typically the most nutrient (algae food) and oxygen deprived—therefore fountains fail to circulate the part of the pond that needs it most.

4.    Fountain Manufacturers Recommend That You Use Dangerous Chemicals:

Most fountain manufacturers will recommend the use of toxic chemicals like copper sulfate with their products to prevent algae growth and, therefore, minimize clogging. This recommendation alone indicates that fountains are inadequate for the treatment of pond algae.

Not only does this chemical recommendation add a significant cost to the use of fountains, but it is potentially dangerous for life both in and around the pond. Please refer to the article, “Protecting National Water Resources” for more information on dangerous pond chemicals like algaecides and herbicides.

5.    Fountain’s High Maintenance Requirements are a Burden:

In the Northern climates, fountains must be removed every fall and replaced every spring as they cannot operate in the freezing winter months. During this time, they must also be stored; many consumers pay thousands of dollars annually for these services on top of the high costs of electricity and toxic chemicals.

What’s more, fountains regularly clog with algae, plant debris, and waste (i.e. plastic bags), necessitating their removal and maintenance—often times by a professional.

6.    Fountains Don’t Allow You to Aerate in the Winter:

Because fountains utilized in Northern climates must be removed in the winter, there is no pond mixing during these months. This allows the surface of the water to freeze over and begin to trap accumulating noxious gasses that can lead to fish kills.

7.    Fountains Raise Safety Concerns Around Your Pond:

Fountains require electricity to be run into and across the pond, and this represents a large safety concern to life in and around the area if the integrity of the wire is compromised.

For an energy efficient, eco-friendly alternative to pond management, check out the MARS Aeration System. Its patented Double Bubble™ Technology both mixes and aerates your pond—keeping it healthy, clear, and algae and odor free.